How sleight of hand paid off

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Secret efforts to free Australian hostage Douglas Wood began in
earnest after his family publicly stated that they would make a
donation to an Iraqi charity.

Sources told The Sunday Age that the initial deal
negotiated through Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali in late May and
early June was that Mr Wood would be freed for a payment of
$US100,000 ($A130,000) and not the $US25 million that was being
demanded. When Mr Wood's family said the money would go to a
charity, it was interpreted by the kidnappers as a coded message
that money would be paid to secure his release.

It was on this basis that Australian authorities secretly
planned to evacuate Mr Wood from Dubai around June 6.

But members of the team are understood to have had second
thoughts. Worried about the criminal gang ending up with the money
and concerned about setting a precedent, evacuation was
delayed.

Circumstances contrived to make the delay manageable without
alerting the kidnappers. Sheikh Hilali, who had arrived in Baghdad
for the changeover, was confronted by an impossible situation on
the streets of the capital, with a wave of terrorist activity
making safe passage virtually impossible.

Moving Mr Wood posed an unacceptable risk to his life and the
lives of others.

Sheikh Hilali said Australian diplomat Nick Warner supported
this view.

The response team faced two problems: how to get Mr Wood out
safely without paying his abductors and how to maintain faith with
the sheikh, who had used his status as a leading Australian Muslim
cleric to convinced the intermediaries that the money would be paid
after Mr Wood was released, not before. The sheikh was honour-bound
to pay the money and the Islamic community in Australia had also
raised money as a precaution if the Wood family was unable to come
up with the full amount. The sheikh could not be seen to renege on
the deal.

The Sunday Age is unclear about precisely what happened
next, but it is known that the sheikh helped negotiate a new
changeover date - June 15 - and a drop-off location, Baghdad's
Babylon Hotel. It is more than likely that his calls to the
intermediaries and the calls from the intermediaries to the gang
were bugged, allowing the response team to pinpoint Mr Wood's
whereabouts.

The Sunday Age believes that it was decided to go in
early and snatch Mr Wood before the arranged changeover. To be
successful, the operation could not be carried out by Australians
and it had to appear, as John Howard put it, to be a miracle, a
chance discovery by Iraqi forces.

It was initially admitted that some Australian forces were
present during the raid, but it was conducted by Iraqi troops who
received the credit from Mr Howard for finding Mr Wood during a
routine operation.

The raid on the house was not regarded as particularly
dangerous, as the guards were lightly armed, knew the deal had been
done and were unlikely to seriously resist. As it turned out, there
was a burst of gunfire, but it is not clear who did the shooting.
Nobody was killed.

It was vital that the sheikh have no prior knowledge of the
operation. He had to be able to claim, as he later did, that he
knew nothing about it and that he had not dishonoured his agreement
to exchange Mr Wood for money or medical aid.

Publicly, it appeared that a miracle had saved Mr Wood.

One source summed it up this way: "The sheikh was going to pay
the $US100,000. He was going to make the pay-off, but he never got
to do it. They decided to go in early before he had a chance to
deliver the money.

"There were just a couple of guys there and they put up no
resistance, because they knew he was to be handed over. They found
Douglas Wood with a blanket over him sitting on a bed."